French language Q&A Forum

Hello, if the use of vouloir in the past tense is closer to tried, how do you say « i wanted to... » ? There is a reasonable difference between meanings in English e.g. i wanted to go shopping and I tried to go shopping...

How can you tell that the qu'  in "Qu'aimez-vous?" means que rather than qui?  I.e., why isn't it "who do you like?" instead of "what do you like?"

For example if you were to say 'I like carrots', can't you say j'aime des carottes as well as j'aime les carottes ?

Or do they mean different things?

parce qu'il a deviné cela?

As per dictionary the word magasin is masculine.. so why are we saying here  retirer en magasin?

I'm trying to work out what to do when the two subjects are a person and something inanimate. Basically I want to say "I miss you and Paris" - and can only come up with "Toi et Paris me manquent" which doesn't seem right, or "Toi et Paris me manquez" -which definitely seems wrong! Maybe this is something you just can't say in French?

I got it wrong for using ces sont instead of ce sont. Kwiz pointed me to this lesson but it doesn't explain why ces is wrong.

This is a sample sentence from this lesson: 

J'ai de plus en plus de mal à me concentrer.

I understand the more and more part.  As a student, without the translation, I would not have come up with I'm struggling more and more to focus.   I was seeing this as ... I have (more and more) pain myself to concentrate.  Is there a lesson on avoir mal a that talks about struggling?  If so J'ai de plus en plus de mal avec cette example! :)